Germany arrests 25 in nationwide raid against domestic terrorists
German authorities carried out the biggest-ever raid targeting right-wing extremists, saying a nationwide operation thwarted a domestic terrorist group planning to violently overthrow the government.
More than 3,000 German law enforcement officers participated in the property search across at least seven of the country’s 16 states early Wednesday. Twentyfive people were taken into custody, including a ring-leader nobleman and a former lawmaker with the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany. Others are former military personnel.
Authorities didn’t describe an imminent attack. But members of the group, which adhered to a far-right ideology that rejects the legitimacy of Germany’s postworld War II order, planned to attack the German parliament in
Berlin, according to the Federal Prosecutor.
Members of the group were also driven by the Qanon conspiracy theory movement, many of whose followers were present on the steps of the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack.
“They are firmly convinced that Germany is currently ruled by members of a so-called Deep State,” according to the prosecutor. They believe the country will be liberated by the “Alliance,” a secret organization of governments, intelligence services and armed forces of various nations, including Russia and the U.S.
The group’s members fell within Germany’s so-called “Reichsbürger” movement, a lose agglomeration whose ideology draws from the country’s pre-world War I militaristic monarchy and rejects the democratic structures of the Federal Republic, established in 1949 as West Germany.
Part of the plan was to set up an interim government and begin negotiations with the victorious World War II governments, above all Russia. The nobleman, identified as Heinrich XIII P. R., the group’s leader, sought to contact Russian officials, according to the prosecutor.
“There are however no indications so far in the investigation that representatives reacted positively to his suggestions,” the prosecutor said in the statement.